Mantis Free React Admin Template: seven demo pages and a JavaScript starting point

The free repository holds the JavaScript edition, not the TypeScript one

The most important thing to establish before writing any code is which edition you are looking at. The repository description calls Mantis a React dashboard template combining the tone of two popular React component libraries, MUI and Ant Design. The documentation says it is a free and open source React dashboard template made using the Material UI React component library with the aim of flexibility and better customisability.

The comparison table at the end of the documentation is where the free and paid editions are separated, and it is blunt. Mantis Free has 7 demo pages. Mantis Pro has demo pages in the hundreds, a components section with 299 or more entries, multi-language support, dark and light mode, a TypeScript version, Next JS 16, design files in Figma, multiple colour options, RTL support, 5 or more applications, form validation, 11 or more layouts, 9 or more plugins, a React Table with 21 or more pieces, and both ApexChart and MUI Chart integrations.

So the free repository is not a crippled Pro. It is a smaller project with a different subset, and the interesting question is whether the subset you need is inside it. The topic list on the repository names react, react19, material-ui, mui, mui9, ant-design, react-dashboard, react-template, react-theme and admin-template, and the primary language of the repository is JavaScript, which is consistent with the table listing TypeScript as a Pro feature.

The naming story is a small indicator of the intent. The documentation explains that the logo comes from the insect, mantises having triangular heads and flexible necks, and that the name also derives from Material and Ant Design. The stated design rule is that Ant Design principles sit on top of the Material UI React component library.

Three directories, and a stack split across two of them

The top level of the repository is short enough to take in at a glance. There is a directory named next, a directory named vite, and a directory named prompts, alongside the usual .github directory, a CODE_OF_CONDUCT document, the LICENSE file and the README.

The three directories explain the two axes of the project. The prompts directory corresponds to a feature the documentation lists in the initial release, a Prompt Library for centralised access to prebuilt AI prompts, which is an unusual thing to find in an admin template and suggests the vendor treats an AI prompt library as a product surface in its own right. The next and vite directories are two application shells, one built on Next JS and one on Vite, which explains a detail in the badges: React 19, Material UI 9 and Next JS 16 are advertised, yet the getting started instructions describe a yarn workflow rather than a Next workflow.

That ambiguity is worth resolving in your own checkout rather than from the documentation. The getting started steps are a plain git clone, a package install and a start command, with no mention of a build step, a dev server port or an environment file, which reads like a Vite based project rather than a Next one. If your plan involves server components, routing conventions from the Next App Router or a deployment to a Node host, you need to confirm which of the two directories holds the code you intend to modify.

The absence of a .env.example, a Dockerfile or a CI workflow in the top level listing is also a signal. This is a front end template with no backend story of its own, which is normal for a dashboard shell, and it means the data layer, the API client and the auth flow are yours to write.

Cloning and running it takes three commands

The setup sequence in the documentation is short enough to state exactly, which is a point in the template's favour. The first step is cloning the repository:

git clone https://github.com/codedthemes/mantis-free-react-admin-template.git

The second step installs the packages with yarn:

yarn

The third starts the project:

yarn run start

That is the whole documented path, and there is no environment variable to set, no service to start and no key to obtain before you see the interface. For an evaluation, that is the ideal property: you can be looking at the layout in a couple of minutes and decide whether the visual direction is right before you invest in adapting it.

The absence of those steps is also a limitation to weigh. There is no documented build command, no note about production deployment, no mention of environment variables for API endpoints or a base URL, and no description of what the demo pages read from. The screenshots and the live preview linked in the documentation are therefore the primary way to judge what you get, and the code is the primary way to find out how it is wired.

The download route is an alternative to cloning. The documentation links a live preview for Mantis Free and a download button that points to the vendor's item page, and separately lists Mantis Pro with its own preview and download. Both editions are also covered by a Discord community link and a set of other resources in the documentation's later sections.

Seven demo pages is the boundary that decides the decision

Most of the reasoning about this template reduces to one number. Seven demo pages is what the free edition contains, against a hundred or more in Pro, and the gap between them is not just count. The Pro column is filled with capabilities rather than pages: authentication methods listed as JWT, Auth0, Firebase, AWS and Supabase, form validation, a React Table with 21 or more components, charting through both ApexChart and MUI Chart, and a plugins section with 9 or more entries.

Each of those absent capabilities corresponds to a real piece of work. A dashboard without a data table integration means hand building grid behaviour, sorting, pagination and column definition against whatever the API returns. A dashboard without a chart library means shipping a charting dependency and writing the visualisation layer yourself. A dashboard without an authentication method means writing a sign-in flow, a session store and a route guard. None of that is impossible, but all of it is work that the paid edition has already done, and the vendor is candid that this is where the difference lies.

The dark and light mode row is the one to watch. It appears in the Pro column and not in the Free one, which for a dashboard that gets looked at all day is the kind of feature teams notice immediately when it is missing. RTL support and multiple colour options are in the same position.

The free edition is therefore best understood as a visual shell plus a handful of screens, and the fair question is whether the shell is what you were going to build anyway. If your application needs a specific set of screens that you will design regardless, seven demo pages may be exactly enough to see the components in context. If you expected to receive a working application skeleton with the tables and forms already solved, it is not that.

What the alternative approach costs you

The comparison that matters is with a component library on its own, because Mantis is not a framework, it is a Material UI application with a design applied.

Material UI alone gives you the component set, the theming system and the accessibility behaviour, and nothing else. Layout, navigation, the sidebar, the header, the page structure, the widget set on the dashboard, all of that is application code that a team writes. Mantis supplies that layer, and the value of that layer is mostly visual consistency and time to first screen, not new capability.

The other comparison is with the Ant Design principles the documentation says sit on top of Material UI. That mixture is a deliberate design choice rather than a technical one, and it has a cost: a developer who knows Ant Design expects a different set of components, props and layout patterns than Material UI provides, and a team maintaining the template later has to read whichever library the code actually uses. The description does not itemise which components follow which convention, so the mixing is something you discover while reading the source rather than from the documentation.

What Mantis does not attempt is the third option, which is a headless component approach where you own the markup and the styling entirely. That is a different amount of work and a different outcome, and nothing in the documentation suggests Mantis is aiming at it.

MIT licensed, released twice this year, and open to modification

The licence is MIT, and the documentation carries a badge saying so, with a LICENSE file in the repository root. That is the most permissive common choice and it means the layout, the components and the demo pages can all be taken into a commercial product without negotiation. For an organisation that wants a dashboard shell without buying a template, that is the headline fact.

The release record shows a project with a steady hand rather than a neglected one. Version 2.2.0 was released on 2026-05-23, version 2.1.0 on 2026-02-23, and version 2.0.1 on 2025-12-24. The last push to the repository was on 2026-09-29 and the repository is not archived. A 2.x line with three tagged releases in under six months is a project that ships when it has something to ship.

The upgrade cost for a team that has adopted the free edition is the usual cost of a template. When a new version lands, the diff is against the vendor's code, and any customisation you have made on top of it has to be replayed. The prompt library and the component set are the parts most likely to churn if the vendor adds to them. The documentation does not describe a changelog format or a migration guide, so the release notes on each tag are what you would use.

The community and support sections point at a Discord server and the vendor's other templates, and the repository has a CODE_OF_CONDUCT document alongside a GitHub issues workflow. A CODE_OF_CONDUCT is worth reading before you file issues, because it sets expectations about how the project handles reports.

Editorial conclusion

Mantis Free is worth taking if you want a polished Material UI dashboard shell to look at and strip down, and if the demo pages are enough to judge the layout, and it is MIT licensed so you can keep whatever you build. It is the wrong starting point if you need TypeScript, a sign-in flow, a data table library, a charting setup or more than a handful of screens, because every one of those sits in the paid tier. Before building on it, run yarn and yarn run start and confirm the demo pages match the components you actually need, then check the directory named next in the repository, since the badge in the documentation mentions Next JS 16 while the getting started steps describe a yarn workflow, and understand which of the two the free edition is wired for.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. codedthemes/mantis-free-react-admin-template on GitHub
2. License: MIT
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases